We think the good times will last forever and we shouldn't save energy. But entropy grows, and ultimately thanks to it, there will be no useful energy in our Universe. Thanks to the contributions of generations of dinosaurs and their plant friends, we have a fuel that can be burned. If we ever get rid of our dependence on these fuels, we will start using renewable sources like sun, wind, ebb and flow, geothermal and hydrothermal energy. And if physicists start doing useful things, we can harness and harness the power of the Sun and generate unlimited amounts of energy in the course of thermonuclear fusion, using eternal hydrogen in all the world's oceans.
We will never run out of H +. There is a lot of hydrogen. 75% of the mass of the baryonic matter of the Universe falls on this one-proton friend. It is followed by helium and lithium, and we will gladly use these materials in our futuristic thermonuclear reactors. It will definitely be.
Everything goes to the point that the good times will never end. As long as we have energy to burn, we will never need. When we scale up our consumption, everything looks fantastic. Ocean liners the size of Kilimanjaro will embody our wildest fantasies, colossal mega-buildings, orbital casinos, where life will be cheap and pleasant. We will build large buildings, and skyscrapers in Dubai will seem archaic to us. Unfortunately, it is naive to believe that this will last forever. One day the good times will end. Not soon, but in the distant future, all the energy of the Universe will be spent and not even one electron will be found that can light an LED lamp.
Astronomers have long speculated about the distant future of the universe. One day, all the major stars use their hydrogen and become cold white dwarfs, and even the dimmest red dwarfs will burn up their hydrogen. When galaxies on their own can no longer make stars. When all the matter in the Universe is absorbed by black holes or cools down to the temperature of the microwave background of the Universe.
Black holes on their own evaporate, slowly disappear over many eons, until they become pure energy. The last proton of matter will decay into energy and dissolve. May be. Nobody is sure about that. If you prove it, you are guaranteed a Nobel Prize, if anything.
All this time, the Universe has been expanding, spreading matter and energy, stretching and moving away. Mysterious dark matter caused the expansion of the universe to accelerate, material to stretch until photons alone were stretched out over light years. This is entropy, the tendency of energy to be evenly distributed. After, in general, everything becomes the same temperature, you will reach the maximum entropy, and further work will simply be impossible to carry out.
This phenomenon is known as the heat death of the universe. The temperature of the entire universe will be an infinitesimal fraction of a degree above absolute zero. The moment when no more energy can be extracted from the atom and no work can be done. Our Universe will simply run out of useful energy.
Interestingly, the energy will be the same as it was from the very beginning, but it will be distributed throughout the Universe, everywhere. This will not happen soon. It will be trillions of years before the last stars die, and it’s completely unclear how long it will take before black holes evaporate. We also don't know if protons have the ability to decay at all. But heat death is our inevitable future.
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There is good news too. The entire Universe can descend to a new energy state. If we wait long enough, the universe can spontaneously generate a new version of itself using quantum fluctuations. Given the endless amount of time, who knows what might happen.
Burn dinosaur remains! Enjoy the light of the sun and the hum of your desktop thermonuclear reactor. Your distant descendants will envy your extravagance as they will have to huddle around the dying heat of the last black holes in the hope that a new universe will emerge.
What grandiose things can our energy go to in the future? Let's assume.
ILYA KHEL